Canadian leaders debates - 2015

Pondering wrote:

NorthReport wrote:

Where has Trudeau been since he was annointed leader. For starters his House of Commons attendance record is pretty shoddy, and is worse than Ignatieff. Trudeau let Mulcair do all the heavy lifting and now Trudeau wants the glory, which is not in tune with most Canadian voters' values. 

You do realize the NDP is the Official Opposition? The benefit is that they get to be front and centre in the House of Commons. As the party in 3rd place the Liberals don't get to ask many questions. Mulcair was just doing his job, and he did do it very well but Canadians don't pay much attention to the HoC because it is all theatre.

Lots of anti-Trudeau ads tonight.

 I love it when the Tories stupidly spend thier money on helping the NDP campaign. Uniting the anti CPC vote behind the NDP, one CPC dollar at a time.

 Harper actually lost his cool a few times, if you know what to look for it was noticible.

I saw it in a pub, so it was hard to really get much from it.  Is there a video of it on the internet somewhere?

Some in the media are hyping Justin's performance but many are not.

I am always wary of my own perceptions about debates. My own view is that Tom started slowly but dominated the last half of the debate. May was uniformly good and both Harper and Trudeau somewhat better than expected.

I thought Trudeau got quite vague and even frantic in the last half and that his closing speech was a joke, although some think it was wonderful.

I watched the debate in a pub where the Greens had reserved a couple adjoining tables. They seemed much more enthuiastic about Tom than Justin, cheering his sallies almost as lustily as May's. When it came to Justin's closing, our Green neighbours positively jeered him and were even more negative towards him than we were.

 I concider his mishandling of national unity a gaffe, and his closing was bad too.

 The only person who did worse was Harper.

 I'm also disgusting at the one sides commentary on Justin Trudeau's 9 comment as if it were witty and insightful, it was goofy and avoiding a serious and reasonable question that shouldn't have been avoided.

nicky wrote:

Some in the media are hyping Justin's performance but many are not.

I am always wary of my own perceptions about debates. My own view is that Tom started slowly but dominated the last half of the debate. May was uniformly good and both Harper and Trudeau somewhat better than expected.

I thought Trudeau got quite vague and even frantic in the last half and that his closing speech was a joke, although some think it was wonderful.

I watched the debate in a pub where the Greens had reserved a couple adjoining tables. They seemed much more enthuiastic about Tom than Justin, cheering his sallies almost as lustily as May's. When it came to Justin's closing, our Green neighbours positively jeered him and were even more negative towards him than we were.

Yeah.  I saw it in a pub with NDP supporters, and May was often cheered by those present.  Trudeau's opening statement about supporting corporate tax cuts seemed to set the tone for him, while both May and Mulcair spoke against this.  Trudeau's final speech caused laughter.  But maybe those who are less partisan might have found it appealing.

It's hard to say if this debate will make much of a difference.  I myself am not sure who won.  Mulcair seemed a bit too measured in my opinion.  But that might appeal to people.  I dunno.

 Attacking Harper over a typo is childish, he has many far more legit faults to be concerned about.

 One thing that isn't getting talked about enough is the fact that Mulcair was very sucessful at establishing his credentials as a good administer and politician, and that he got results and was effient.

I really enjoyed that debate. Both of my favourite moments ("Nobody believes you, Mr. Harper", and "What's the number... he won't answer... give us a number") would not have happened in a more rigid environment.

When I was young, debates always had lots of cross-talk and candidates challenging each other, but they've become so hyper-managed over the years that they've become more like auditions than debates. You ask me a question, I give my prepared speech (which may or may not be related to the question) and basically pretend like the other candidates aren't in the room. Hopefully this marks a return to more rough and tumble match-ups.

Mulcair was very good in the sense that he's corrected many of his problems. His messaging was great most of the time (there was just one subject where it felt that he wasn't clear and direct, but I can't remember what it was) and his manner commanded attention and controlled the debate. He was never jostling for words and usually had the last say.

But he still felt very stilted. A little too switched-on with no sense of ease about him. None of the other candidates had that either, but still, it's key to building support and trust. His smile was plastered on and his voice was overmodulated. It's good that he stopped talking so fast, but in this debate he spoke so slowly I was starting to wonder if they'd shot him with something. I'm sure he'll find the right balance eventually but he doesn't have it yet.

But he was the clear winner, which is the important thing.

May was better than I've ever seen her be. I supported her being in the debate, but was hesitant to have her eating up air time from the others. Turns out she brought more to the conversation than anyone else. It's easy to say that May won the debate, and many have, but the point of the debate is to determine who you'll vote for and we all know they won't be voting Green, so unless there's some seismic shift between now and e-day, she couldn't really "win" the debate no matter how well she did.

Harper aquitted himself really well, sadly, but that's not surprising. What is a surprise is how eager Justin was to let him off the hook in order to pursue his ill-advised strategies against Mulcair. The whole segment on democracy, where Harper is super vulnerable, was wasted talking about Quebec seperatism, of all the irrelevent nonsense. Though it did lead to Justin looking like a fool, so that was entertaining, but still a huge waste of a chance to turn voters off from Harper.

Strangely, you could call this both Harper's worst debate and his best. I thought he came off more engaged and human than I'd ever seen him be before (he usually looks sedated to me). But in his other debates he was never carrying the same baggage. There were so many times when the others flat-out called him a liar and kept hammering him with his atrocious record.

And poor Justin. He was on his script, but no amount of coaching can prepare you for the big chair if you don't actually belong there. He was anxious, rushed, and uncomfortable, even frantic at some points. His answers were the least cogent of all four. And his closing statements were shocking in how pathetic they were. I literally couldn't stop laughing. I'd already moved past the point where I was worried he might still get his act together, but watching him in this I couldn't help but feel a little bad for the guy. he is getting some terrible advice, and will be the one taking all the heat for it in the end. Poor sod.

so.... you hearing everywhere is your sister's comments lmao?

NorthReport wrote:

Well thought out, reasonable and appropriate response. You go Tom.  

Mulcair lays out conditions for future debates; ‘thrilled’ with first one

http://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2015/08/07/mulcair-lays-out-conditions-...

So, assuming the NDP keeps to their deadline of tomorrow, and given the debates that are going ahead, it's official.  Mulcair won't be in any more English debates.

Arthur Cramer wrote:

pookie wrote:

NorthReport wrote:

Well thought out, reasonable and appropriate response. You go Tom.  

Mulcair lays out conditions for future debates; ‘thrilled’ with first one

http://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2015/08/07/mulcair-lays-out-conditions-...

So, assuming the NDP keeps to their deadline of tomorrow, and given the debates that are going ahead, it's official.  Mulcair won't be in any more English debates.

Are you saing Pookie that Tom won't debate, or that he's standing on piniciple? I'm wondering what your take of it is.

I think it's a "principle" Mulcair should have mentioned much sooner but lets just agree that he is standing on principle. I'm happy he found a principle he's willing to lose the election over, not that I am convinced he will won't drop it if he sees his numbers going down.

Pondering, are you back on earth yet?

FYI the word "avuncular" comes from the Latin word for Uncle and it means "Uncle-like" - it is virtually always used in a positive and when you say someone is "avuncular" it means they are "like a friendly uncle and kind of "lovable". I know of no context in which it is ever an insult.

Jacob Two-Two, you think Muclair was "dominant" in the debate?

Srsly??

Arthur I was simply going off of Mulcair's Friday (?) statement about future debates.  It was the first from him in a while - we've been hearing from campaign people.  He stood firm on the French-English thing.  Today's the NDP's self-imposed deadline though it can of course be extended.  Perhaps there will be another French offer, as Stockholm says.

Another point: I believe a week or so ago Ann McGrath was leaked as saying that universities were insufficiently non-partisan as hosts (sorry no time to find link).  So....surely the Munk School would be out for the NDP.

Debates are total bullshit.

Brachina wrote:

 Actually Justin knew it was coming, some fucking idiot in the NDP told the huffington post, who made sure Justin knew ahead of time. That pathetic answer the media biazzarely thinks was clever, was the best he could come out with.

Nine Supreme Court judges said there is no number that can be declared in advance which Tommy is well aware of so why is he even asking that question?  The SC said that parliament would have to decide within the context of all the parameters at the time of the vote including, for example, turnout. What's Mulcair's number for turnout?

Mulcair is planning to pass the principles of the Sherbrooke Declaration including asymetrical federalism into law while pretending it isn't the business of Canadians to discuss it before the election.

The problem with the Sherbrooke Declaration is that attempts to be a solution to a problem that no longer exists. Mulcair raises the Sherbrooke declaration as a means of currying favor with nationalists and to a lessor extent separatists because that is a major part of the NDP's constituency in Quebec.

It costs Trudeau to be such an outspoken supporter of the Clarity Act in Quebec. That was one of the first things he did that attracted my support. Not only did he express support for it he did so at a French university. That is having the courage of your convictions. If Mulcair thinks the Sherbrooke declaration is so great he should be willing to defend it in English anywhere in Canada instead of suggesting there is something invalid about raising the issue.

Pondering wrote:

Brachina wrote:

 Actually Justin knew it was coming, some fucking idiot in the NDP told the huffington post, who made sure Justin knew ahead of time. That pathetic answer the media biazzarely thinks was clever, was the best he could come out with.

Nine Supreme Court judges said there is no number that can be declared in advance which Tommy is well aware of so why is he even asking that question?  The SC said that parliament would have to decide within the context of all the parameters at the time of the vote including, for example, turnout. What's Mulcair's number for turnout?

Where are you getting this from?  I believe the case JT was referring to is this one.  Your assertions are not reflected in the decision, IMO.

In the post debate media scrums, Elizabeth May declared that she liked Trudeau's answer to Mulcair's question, 'what is your number?'.
She would not give a number and chose instead to bullshit about further studying the nine justices decisions.
Another example of the Green/Liberal tag team.

This highlights the need to have debates governed under the Canada Elections Act. A parliamentary committeee should set the ground rules including the number of debates, the timing and format and then require them to be aired on an appropriate range of media outlets. Then any leader who doesn't want to attend doesn't have too.

Michael Moriarity wrote:

Thanks for the link, mark. I took a look at the decision. It contains the phrase "clear majority" 17 times. Only 2 of those mentions involve defining what a "clear majority" is. From the Summary of Conclusions (my emphasis):

SCC wrote:

153                               The task of the Court has been to clarify the legal framework within which political decisions are to be taken "under the Constitution", not to usurp the prerogatives of the political forces that operate within that framework.  The obligations we have identified are binding obligations under the Constitution of Canada. However, it will be for the political actors to determine what constitutes "a clear majority on a clear question" in the circumstances under which a future referendum vote may be taken.  Equally, in the event of demonstrated majority support for Quebec secession, the content and process of the negotiations will be for the political actors to settle.  The reconciliation of the various legitimate constitutional interests is necessarily committed to the political rather than the judicial realm precisely because that reconciliation can only be achieved through the give and take of political negotiations.  To the extent issues addressed in the course of negotiation are political, the courts, appreciating their proper role in the constitutional scheme, would have no supervisory role.

To me, this says the opposite of what Pondering asserts. The judges are clearly putting the responsibility on the politicians to clarify what actually constitutes a "clear majority". The so-called Clarity Act doesn't even attempt to answer this question. It simply punts the decision to whoever is in charge at the time of the next referendum. The NDP's Unity Act, on the other hand, stakes out a practical, fair, and clear process for determining this question. In short, Trudeau and the Liberals are just being assholes about this.

Did you miss the part " in the circumstances under which a future referendum vote may be taken. "

Those circumstances are not known in advance therefore the Supreme court intended the decision to be punted to whomever is in charge at the time.  There is no reason to determine it in advance. There is no reason to be raising the subject at all. Oddly something Mulcair says in English but not in French.

If there's no reason to be raising the subject, then why aren't you irritated at Justin and his dream team of political geniuses for constantly bringing it up and refusing to leave it alone? If it's all so irrelevent then why aren't you criticising Justin for prompting an argument about it and wasting the whole segment on democracy that should have been used to attack Harper's terrible record? Personally, I've never heard Mulcair bring this up even once.

So if it isn't important then the Liberals need to stop talking about it and wasting everyone's time. If it is important, on the other hand, then it makes no sense for Justin to be attacking Mulcair's threshold while not committing to one himself. If he can't give a number that's right because the vote isn't happening right now, then he also can't say that a certain number is wrong for the same reason. If he was saying that Mulcair shouldn't be giving a number at all then that would be consistent, at least, but that's not the complaint he's been making. He's saying that this specific threshold of 50% +1 is wrong, wrong, wrong. Now you turn around and say he can't say a number is right because the conditions of the vote aren't apparent. Logically, this same lack of conditions means he also can't say that any number is wrong, yet he does.

It makes no sense, but it isn't meant to. It's the Liberal party desperately trying to find something to attack on a guy who's fairly unassailable, at least from their political territory, and settling on this in the hopes that nobody thinks it through too hard.

I also find this implication that Mulcair is saying different things in French and English to be highly dubious. I don't speak French myself, but I do know that this would be a very poor strategy to employ on the people of Quebec. The few people who can't understand any english know someone who does. There's a reason Quebecers worry about their language being erased, and it's because a lot of people speak English in Quebec. If Mulcair was trying to fool Francophones by giving them different lines, it would get back to them. I find it highly unlikely that Mulcair is this stupid.

Meanwhile there are tons of people in English Canada that don't speak a word of French. While it makes no sense to assume that Mulcair is trying to pull a fast one on people who don't speak English by feeding them different messages, it makes a lot of sense to assume that the Liberals are saying that he does in order to pull a fast one on people who don't speak French who will never know the difference. That's a dishonest strategy that might actually work, and the one the dishonest Liberals are currently employing to try to tear down the NDP in the absence of any real criticisms.

Jacob Two-Two wrote:

If there's no reason to be raising the subject, then why aren't you irritated at Justin and his dream team of political geniuses for constantly bringing it up and refusing to leave it alone? If it's all so irrelevent then why aren't you criticising Justin for prompting an argument about it and wasting the whole segment on democracy that should have been used to attack Harper's terrible record? Personally, I've never heard Mulcair bring this up even once.

That is because you don't listen to French broadcasts. In French Mulcair does raise the subject. In English Mulcair accuses Trudeau of raising it as though it isn't current NDP policy which is a central part of Mulcair's campaign in Quebec. It's disingenuous to have active NDP policy that no one is supposed to talk about in English.

Jacob Two-Two wrote:

I also find this implication that Mulcair is saying different things in French and English to be highly dubious. I don't speak French myself, but I do know that this would be a very poor strategy to employ on the people of Quebec. The few people who can't understand any english know someone who does. There's a reason Quebecers worry about their language being erased, and it's because a lot of people speak English in Quebec. If Mulcair was trying to fool Francophones by giving them different lines, it would get back to them. I find it highly unlikely that Mulcair is this stupid. 

In English Mulcair is pretending that he isn't raising the issue of the Sherbrooke Declaration in French which he is.

In French, the Sherbrooke Declaration is active NDP policy.

Jacob Two-Two wrote:

So if it isn't important then the Liberals need to stop talking about it and wasting everyone's time. If it is important, on the other hand, then it makes no sense for Justin to be attacking Mulcair's threshold while not committing to one himself. 

As long as Mulcair is raising the topic of Quebec separation and it is active NDP policy then it's very important. Why is Mulcair reopening this can of worms?

Jacob Two-Two wrote:

  That's a dishonest strategy that might actually work, and the one the dishonest Liberals are currently employing to try to tear down the NDP in the absence of any real criticisms.

What's dishonest is Mulcair promoting the Sherbrooke Declaration in French while pretending there is nothing to discuss in English.

Pondering wrote:

As long as Mulcair is raising the topic of Quebec separation and it is active NDP policy then it's very important. Why is Mulcair reopening this can of worms?

It's active NDP policy because it's the right policy. All democratic questions are 50% +1. Raising the threshold is what people do to try and rig the system against a majority decision. They oppose 50% +1 because they oppose democracy in general. But just because something's a good policy for a hypothetical situation doesn't mean it's important or worth fighting over. We have real problems that need discussion and Justin wastes the precious debate time raising this issue of hypotheticals over situations that will almost certainly never occur. Meanwhile Harper gets off the hook for his terrible record on democracy.

Was that Justin's plan? Having accepted that he can't win, is he back to teaming up with the Cons to stop the NDP and keep Harper in power like the Libs did under Iggy? Will we see far more of Justin distracting from Harper's real crimes by throwing made-up foolishness at Mulcair instead? I bet we will.

Jacob Two-Two wrote:

  In the debate Mulcair said that the only two people that keep bringing up seperatism are Justin and Duceppe. Do I believe that he was simply lying and hoping that no french speakers would notice? No. That would be absurdly dumb which Mulcair isn't. 

You don't have to speak French to find evidence of Mulcair's statements on Ste Jean Baptiste a few months ago.

But Mulcair, who was environment minister under a previous Quebec Liberal government, reminded reporters of his party's so-called Sherbrooke Declaration of 2005, a document that stated Quebec should be granted "specific powers and room for manoeuvring."

With that declaration, the party endorsed the principle of recognizing a referendum victory by the sovereigntist Yes side, even if it were by a majority of 50 per cent plus one.

That clashes with the federal Clarity Act, which calls for the need for a "clear majority."

Moreover, the declaration offers "asymmetrical federalism," meaning Quebec would be given the right to opt out of federal programs that touch on provincial jurisdiction. Quebec would also receive "full compensation."

Mulcair reiterated that the Sherbrooke Declaration is his party's official position vis-a-vis Quebec's relationship with Ottawa.

"It's clear this political offer remains at the heart of our approach with Quebecers," he said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/06/23/mulcair-says-quebec-sover_n_7648...

Here is another reference:

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/national-post-view-mulcairs-op...

Campaigning in Quebec City on Tuesday, the day before Quebec’s annual Fête Nationale, Mulcair reaffirmed his federalist stance to reporters — on economic grounds, explaining that sovereignty is “a vision that risks really hurting the middle class” — but also reminded them of the NDP’s 2005 Sherbrooke Declaration.

The Sherbrooke Declaration is a document recommending “specific powers and room for manoeuvring” to Quebec, in the name of “asymmetrical federalism” — a troubling and destabilizing doctrine in its own right, but one with a long history of support in the NDP. Mulcair made it clear that the Sherbrooke Declaration would be his party’s official position in Quebec’s dealings with Ottawa.

But the Sherbrooke Declaration also endorses 50 per cent plus one. Only amnesia or extreme political opportunism can explain Mulcair’s mischievous twirl of this particular poker in the buried, but ever-glowing cinders of ethnic nationalism.

Jacob Two-Two wrote:

Do I believe you are lying to me right now when you say Mulcair keeps bringing seperatism up? Yes. Given that I've seen you tell many lies on this board, I think that's the most rational conclusion by far..... But like I said, I don't speak french. Any french speakers here that aren't mindless shills for the Liberal party and would like to settle this? Is Mulcair talking about hypothetical seperatist referendums all the time in french without others prompting him? It seems really unlikely.

There is no need to "believe" anyone, I am quoting news sources. You have no clue what you are talking about, you are making unsubstanciated claims, but you call me a liar.

The Sherbrooke Declaration is active NDP policy which they promote in Quebec.